Angel's Miracle by Maia

Note: Maia wrote a moving story about a baby girl. She also was brave and was the first girl to read her work at the workshop reading for parents!    

Angel’s Miracle

by Maia 

          “Henry, wake up we got to run to the hospital your mom’s having the baby,” shouted my dad

          I looked at the clock it was 4:53 am. I dragged myself out of my bed.

          “Dad…is it a boy tell me please!”

         “Henry, that is a question that cannot be answered until we see the baby - it’s a surprise. Go grab something to eat out of the pantry. We have got to hurry. Now.”

         When we were in the car going to the hospital, there was dead silence. Finally, when we got to the front doors of the hospital, Mom quickly waddled to the front desk while my dad was sprinting behind.

        “We need to get to the ER my wife’s having her baby!” he yelled.

        My mom and dad were in the ER while some nurse started asking me a load of questions. How in the world would you be able to answer about 13 questions at 5:16 am?!!!

                3 hours later

My dad shook me awake.

“Henry. Wake up Henry……

“What” I said sleepily. I got up and started running toward room 206.

“Is it a boy?!!!”

“Henry, wait. It’s a surprise.”

A Month Later

“Valerie” shouted my dad

“What Michael, I am burping baby Angel.”

“Mom, why is Angel a girl? Why can’t she just be a boy? It’s so annoying why is she so sick.”

“Henry, she is 6 weeks too early and she hasn’t fully developed.”

“Mom, you say that every time.” 

I ran outside to my new neighbor Amy.

“Hi, Amy” I said, “Angel is so sick and…”

“Can I see her, can I see her?” asked Amy”

“She’s uh, yeah sure, one second.”

I went into the house and heard my dad screaming “Valerie… she stopped breathing Val!” My mom was running up the stairs.

“Get In the car, Michael!”

“Henry! We need you to go to Amy’s now! We’ll call you in a bit!!” Mom yelled to me as they were driving away.

“Amy” I yelled

“Yeah” she said.

“Uh, can I stay with you for a while my mom and dad run to the hospital? Angel stopped breathing.” I said, with a sigh.

“Oh my gosh, Will she be OK?” Amy asked.

“Yeah, I think so…they said they’d call me in a bit” I said.

“Henry, uh, you can stay as long as you need. I hope Angel’s OK.”

We walked into Amy’s house. It was very modern and weird looking. All different shapes, but only black and white, with a lot of pictures of a man.

“Amy, who is this?” I pointed to the picture of her and the man with three other kids.

“He’s my Dad. He died three years ago, and those kids are my brothers and sisters. They’re at their friends’ house. Maybe you can meet them tomorrow.”

“And you can meet my sister, Angel, as soon as she’s OK,” I said with worry in my voice.

Amy’s Mom was at the kitchen counter. Her house was so big.

“Hi Henry. How are you?”

“I’m OK. I guess.”

“What happened?” she answered. Amy whispered something in her ear, probably about my sister.

“Henry,” she said. “I hope Angel is OK and you definitely can stay as long as you need.”

“Thanks,” I said.

We walked around Amy’s house.

“And this is my room.” Amy said.

It was big with a wall full of windows. There was one mirror on the other wall. She had a really big room: a lot nicer than mine.

“Your Mom’s pretty nice,” I said.

“Thanks.”

                The Next Day

I woke up to the phone ringing. I realized where I was. I was at Amy’s house, hoping it was my Dad, but of course it wasn’t. It was a phone company. But five minutes later, the phone rang again. This time it was actually my Dad. He said that Angel was fine, but she would need surgery the next day.

My Dad and I were heading to the hospital to see Angel. She had a lot of tubes and wires stuck to her chest. She wasn’t OK. She wasn’t doing fine. I tried to go in the room where she was, but my Mom told me I wasn’t allowed to. My Dad and I stayed a couple of hours more.

Finally, we went home, ordered out Chinese. Me and my Dad didn’t go to sleep until 1. The entire night we watched movies and just laughed since we hadn’t had a laugh since Angel was born.

That morning we went to the hospital again. My Mom said that she had a dream that some sort of invisible person was trying to pick the baby and just hold her. She said she tried to get out of bed, but she couldn’t. Angel was just looking at the person, laughing and smiling.

A little later on, I was wandering around the hospital, seeing all different patients. Doctors were running in the opposite direction, saying “Hurry! Go to room 206! Code red!”

Angel had stopped breathing again. When I got to the room, they were wheeling out Angel in her incubator.

“Dad! Mom! What happened?” I yelled.

“Henry, the doctors decided that Angel will have to have an open-heart surgery,” Mom sobbed. Her face was full of tears.

That afternoon, we all waited for hours during the surgery. My Mom said that I should call Amy, since she and her mom were probably worried.

I called Amy and told her everything. And she told me everything would be OK. Then she put her mom on. It was kind of awkward, but eventually my Mom started to talk to her while we were discussing hospital food.

When we came back up, Mom was off the phone, laying in bed. We ate dinner, went to sleep and were woken up in the middle of the night by a nurse coming in to bring Angel back to us. Her heart was beating normally. We heard the monitor going up and down. Up and down.

But later we woke up to the sound of no monitor. It had stopped! She was gone! We were all hysterically crying and hugging. About three minutes later, we were still crying.

Suddenly, we heard the monitor wildly beeping.

Mountains were appearing on the screen. She was OK!

We were all still crying, but happy crying! She was OK! Maybe my Mom’s dream was real! Later that day we took Angel home, and finally Amy got to see her everything had turned out OK.

Thank you invisible person you are an Angel who saved our Angel!



Red Blood Cells to the Rescue! by Anya

Note: Another fine story from the Winter Writers Workshop. Excellent, Anya!

Red Blood Cells to the Rescue
by Anya Chan

There was a 9-year-old girl named Molly. She was a very humorous girl and she loved to study the body. Unfortunately, one day she was riding on her bike and she was on a hill. She tried to slow down but her brakes just wouldn’t cooperate! The next day, she ended up in the HOSPITAL! (I put “hospital” in all caps because even though Molly loved the human body…she HATED HOSPITALS!

She saw her mom talking to her doctor and soon she wished she hadn’t opened her eyes at all! Because as soon as her mom saw that she was awake, she ran over and hugged her until she passed OUT!

She woke up in a big confuzzle! (A word which here means puzzled and confused all mixed or morfed together!) At first, she didn’t know where she was but very soon she found out and the answer was intimidating! She was in someone’s own BODY! She realized that she had shrunk immensely. Everything around her was gigantic!

Her mom was probably freaking out at this point! She walked around and then remembered that her health teacher said that whenever you are in a bad situation you should NOT panic! So she didn’t panic. She stayed completely CALM. (Although she DID think she would DIE!) She saw a little elevator just the right size for her. Even though she thought that it was very unusual to have a small elevator in someone’s body. But since she was adventurous, she went in it.

Once she got in, she pressed the button that said “Brain.” The elevator zoomed up, she looked out of its little window, and Molly got an amazing view of all the body parts. It was like a roller coaster!

Finally, she saw where she was. She was traveling in between the left and right side of the brain! Molly looked around and saw different thoughts going by like “3X21=63” and intricate words.

Molly took a walk in the brain and saw all the nerves and nervous system. She saw something that was very surprising. It was another person in this weird body! She was so happy she thought she would faint! She walked closer and realized it was her teacher Mrs. Collen.

“Mrs. Collen!” Molly cried.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s me.”

“How did you get in here?” Molly asked.

“Just the way you did, with the elevator!” Mrs. Collen said.

“I mean, how did you get into this person’s body?”

“Oh, I can’t answer THAT. I don’t know how I got into this body,” Mrs. Collen said. “Now it’s time to learn about the brain.”

“OK,” Molly said. “I’ve always been interested in the brain.”

“Ask any question you like,” Mrs. Collen said.

“Why are we so tiny?” Molly asked.

“Not those kinds of questions,” she said.

“Oh, fine. What is this sponge next to us?”

“That, my dear is the brain, which you should have known. It helps you blink, do your math, and do all kinds of other stuff.”

Molly looked ahead of her and saw a TANGLE of nerves and it looked like they were fighting each other. She heard something crunch beneath her feet. There was a BIG hole. And she saw a nerve. He foot got stuck and she started SCREAMING! Instead, of panicking, Mrs. Collen said, “Oh, goody. Another adventure!”

With that, Mrs. Collen pushed Molly in and jumped in after herself! Molly closed her eyes and felt curves and turns. She opened her eyes and saw little things that looked like Life Savers, the candy. Mrs. Collen saw what she was looking at and said the Life Savers were actually brain cells.

“They’re also called neurons and they transmit signals to and from the brain,” Mrs. Collen said.

Molly felt a little tingle behind her and screamed because she saw a dendritic cell wrapping its tentacles around her. Mrs. Collen tried to save her, but another dendritic cell came and attacked Mrs. Collen, too!

Now what have we gotten into, Molly thought to herself. The dendritic cell was drowning her in the brain’s blood, but also asking her, “Who are you?”

But Molly knew dendritic cells can’t talk. As she fought to keep from going under, she felt some kind of smooth material. She grabbed onto it and it kept her afloat. A red blood cell
was acting like a life preserver! It was saving her life! Mrs. Collen had one, too. They floated along together to the cerebellum. They hopped off there. Molly wiped the sweat off her forehead and Mrs. Collen said, “What a trip!”

You might think Molly was crazy, but she was beginning to like this trip!

“Where are we again?” Molly asked.

“The cerebellum. It helps you think, eat, sleep, and many other simple things,” Mrs. Collen said.

We walked around the cerebellum at the back of the brain. Molly thought about all the things she could tell her friends when she got out of the brain. If she ever got out.

Dream or Dare by Sashi

Note: 4th grader, Sashi, completed this story in the Winter Writers Workshop. Great job, Sashi!

Dream or Dare
by Sashi

Serena fell to her knees and kissed the ground. She remained there for a while, soaking up the win she worked so hard to achieve. The atmosphere was electric. She was euphoric. Moments like this had to be savoured. The trophy presentation was what she had been waiting for, years of practice had finally paid off.

Nine-year-old Mia worked her way through the crowds onto the tennis courts. It was her lucky moment to be photographed with Serena, her idol, a prize she had won through the local paper. The first thing that came to her mind was immediately to ask her how did she do it? And how could Mia do it?

Mia loved tennis and had found comfort in the game. It was her second home and the familiarity of the courts gave her the confidence to improve and dedicate her spare time to tennis. But right now she wanted to know: How do you become a real champion? Her idol was standing in front of her.

Serena smiled knowingly, she recognised the passion and hunger in Mia’s eyes.
She began talking to Mia. Serena was physically there, but her mind was back on the warm southern coast of Portugal, where she had spent her first ten years.

Times were tough, she said. There were few luxuries but there was always good, wholesome food on the table and a small TV was the only modern technology the family shared. Dad wanted the best for us and he was an avid follower of sports. One day, he showed up with a tennis racket he had bought through the village auction.

Serena, look what I have for you! He exclaimed excitedly whilst holding the surprise behind his back. Serena raced to see him and pulled the racket from behind him. She laughed, what do I know about tennis? What I know, said dad, is that tennis opens up opportunities. There are trophies and lots of crowds involved. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Well I guess there is no harm in trying, I said, and it sounds like fun. That afternoon we headed to the local courts and that was the day I never looked back. It felt good. I felt free running around that court, tripped up a few times, missed most of the balls my dad threw at me, but it always felt good.

We continued this routine, day after day. After my dad came home from work, we would head straight to the court and spent hours together until the sun went down and we could barely see the ball anymore. I improved and kept improving. My dad said I was a natural but that’s typical of dads. They love to encourage so I didn’t think much of his comments. We kept on hitting together.

I missed playdates and parties to go and hit with my dad, I felt a magnetic pull to the courts and did not feel complete without spending some time each day playing.

Lessons were still an extravagance but we both knew that it was the next step if I was to move forward.

I came home from school one day and called out to my parents that we needed to talk. My sports teacher at school had told me there were grants for people in my situation and we need to apply now. This is what I want to dedicate my life to so let’s make it work, I said. My parents grinned, they could see my passion and soon we were filling in the paperwork.

It must have been the longest week of my life waiting for the reply to come back but finally the letter arrived. I was on the courts the next day with my first coach who was tough on me. It was different to playing with my dad. I didn’t expect it to be this tough but I knew that this was going to be expected of me. My intention was one way – all the way to the top.

A month later my coach pulled my dad to the side, Serena is moving quickly, but she needs to move quicker. My advice is home schooling if she is to start entering major tournaments. Shocked at first, my dad did not know how to react but deep down this is what he already knew. Serena, are you ready for this? he asked me. This requires even more discipline and strength. Are you ready?

Mia heard her own Dad calling her name amongst the crowd and Serena’s excited voice. She wanted to ignore him but knew they had to rush. There was a tennis lesson booked for 5pm. She thanked Serena quickly, but was not sure if she had heard her. Serena was still lost in her memorable thoughts.

This is what it takes to be a champion Mia thought and satisfied walked away to find her dad.

Calling all creative girls!

Frequent visitors to the Pink Locker Society blog said they wanted a place to share their stories, poems, and art. So here it is! The pink locker artists blog is ready for your submissions.

Send them to info@pinklockersociety.org. Authors will be identified by first name only. All submissions become the property of Pink Locker Society LLC.